FEMALE in a FOREST TOWN: the Marginalization of Women in Port- Albernïs Economy

FEMALE IN A FOREST TOWN: The Marginalization of Women in Port- Albernïs Economy BRIAN EGAN AND SUSANNE KLAUSEN he increase in women entering the paid labour force has been one of the most dramatic changes in the British Columbia Teconomy over the past half-century. In 1991, almost 60 per cent of women aged fifteen years or older in the province held paying jobs or were actively seeking paid work - up from 15 per cent in 1941.1 In addition, during the post-Second World War period BC women have increasingly found employment in professional fields previously dominated by men. For example, in 1971 only 10 per cent of physicians and surgeons in the province were female; by 1991 this had increased to 24 per cent. The wage gap between men and women in the province has also decreased. In 1971, women employed full-time earned just 58 per cent of what full-time male workers earned; by 1991, this had narrowed to 65 per cent (Census Canada 1971,1991). Despite these gains, British Columbia's economy remains firmly divided by sex. In particular, the sexual division of occupations is still very marked. While women have made inroads into professional fields that were once the almost exclusive domain of men, these fields make up only a small portion of the labour force. Armstrong and Armstrong (1994,15) have noted that, for Canada as a whole, women are still "overwhelmingly slotted into industries and occupations characterized by low pay, low recognized skill requirements, low productivity, and low prospects for advancement."2 A review of data 1 The figure of 15 per cent represents the percentage of women over fourteen years of age in 1941 who were "wage earners" (i.e., women paid wages, commissions, or piece rate). It does not include self-employed professional women, female employers, or women who were seeking work but had no income from employment during that year. 2 In 1994, 86 per cent of all employed women in Canada held jobs in the service sector, and within this sector they tended to be concentrated in low-pay and less secure jobs. In contrast, only 14 per cent of women were employed in goods-producing industries such as car manu facturing or forestry, which pay higher wages (Statistics Canada 1995, 67). Women are still BC STUDIES, no. 118, Summer 1998 5 6 BC STUDIES from the 1991 Canadian census shows that occupations in British Columbia are similarly divided by sex. In 1991, one in every four men in British Columbia was (or had recently been) employed in goods- producing industries, whereas the comparable figure for women was one in nine. In addition, 80 per cent of workers in resource-based industries such as mining, logging, transportation, and fishing were male. In contrast, female workers predominated in the province's service sector; for example, more than 60 per cent of the labour force in the health, social service, finance, insurance, and education in dustries was female (British Columbia Statistics 1993). This high degree of occupational sex-typing contributed to the significant wage gap between the sexes in British Columbia. In 1991, the average in come for full-time male workers in the province was $40,200 com pared to $26,170 for their female counterparts. While these statistics provide a general picture of the sexual divisions in the provincial economy, the focus of this article is on the economic position of women living and working in one of British Columbia's small, forest-dependent communities. Little attention has been focused on the economic status of women in British Columbia's forest-dependent communities; this is somewhat surprising given the central importance of forestry to British Columbia's economy and the major contributions made by feminist scholarship to the study of economics and labour over the past few decades both in Canada and beyond.3 Some scholars have examined various aspects of women's experience in small, resource-dependent towns.4 This research has revealed the fundamentally gendered nature of single-industry towns in British Columbia, which are characterized by imbalanced sex ratios (more males than females), an ideology that defines "men's jobs" (in resource extraction) in opposition to "women's jobs" (chiefly in service occupations either at home or in the public sector), and practices heavily concentrated in traditional female occupations: in 1994,70 per cent of all employed women in Canada were working in teaching, clerical positions, sales and service jobs, and nursing or other health-related occupations (Armstrong and Armstrong 1994, 32). 3 Feminists have been developing a comprehensive critique of androcentric theories of eco nomics and labour since the 1970s, and the literature is vast. The collection Gender and Economics (1995) is an excellent starting point. In the Canadian context important examples of feminist scholarship on the sexual division of labour and women's work (past and present) include: Pat and Hugh Armstrong (1981, 1983, 1990, 1994), Patricia Connelly (1978, 1983, 1990,1992), Joy Parr (1987,1990), and Joan Sangster (1995). 4 Much of the Canadian literature on women in resource communities focuses on eastern fishing communities. See, for example, Porter (1991; 1986), Nadel-Klein, and Davis (1988), and Antler (1977). On the subject of women in BC resource communities see Veit (1976); Bradbury (1977); the Northern Women's Task Force (1977); Marchak (1983); MacKenzie (1987); White, Duke, and Fong (1989); Gill (1990); Newell (1991); and Reed (1995). Female in a Forest Town J that ensure continued sex segregation and women's economic marginalization. In general, sexual divisions have been more marked in these small towns than they are in the province as a whole. Patricia Marchak's landmark study, Green Gold (1983), still stands as the most thorough empirical and coherent theoretical analysis of the economic status of women in forest-dependent towns in British Columbia. In the three forest-dependent towns included in her study (Campbell River, Mackenzie, and Terrace), Marchak observed that women and men formed two virtually distinct labour pools: men were largely employed in production, trades, and professional or managerial positions in the forest sector, while women worked as housewives or were concentrated in non-industrial occupations (mainly clerical and service work or lower-level management). Sex, Marchak concluded, was the primary division of labour in these three towns. Women's participation in the paid labour force was secondary to and determined by their responsibilities for domestic work and child care. Between 63 per cent and 87 per cent of the men in these communities were employed in the forest industry compared to only 3 per cent toy per cent of the women. Income levels were also highly skewed: full-time men workers in these communities earned twice as much as did full- time women workers. In addition, the rate of male participation in the labour force was more than double that of female participation. The work of Marchak and others shows that sex is a fundamental determining factor in the distribution of jobs, status, and income in single-industry towns in British Columbia.5 At this point, we believe it important to clarify usage of the terms "sex" and "gender." While sex refers to the biological categories of female and male and is based on physiological differences, we under stand gender to be both a verb and a noun (Baron 1991, 36). It refers to a process that transforms a person's biological sex (female or male) into a reified social identity (woman or man). The gender process derives social meaning from the relatively minor physical differences between the sexes which, in turn, are utilized in the organization and buttressing of gender inequality. In Gisela Bock's (1989,13) words, physical differences "are used to legitimate pre-existing social relations and, in particular, power relations." A social constructionist perspective (as opposed to a biological, essentialist one) holds that "women" and "men" (and the qualities and characteristics associated 5 Studies of women in resource-dependent communities in other jurisdictions reveal a similar pattern. For example, see Gibson (1992) or Warren (1992). 8 BC STUDIES with them) are made, not born. Put another way, gender is "a social category imposed on a sexed body" (Scott 1988, 32). Conceptions of gender are historically contingent and culturally specific: what qualifies as masculine or feminine varies over time and place and is continually subject to resistance, negotiation, and accommodation. For example, in Western culture the contemporary ideal of female beauty, the dangerously thin waif, is a recent phenomenon that can be traced back to the 1960s. Moreover, gender does more than con stitute unequal sexes; ideas about differences between the sexes shape institutions, practices, and relationships. Invariably, concepts about gender "structure perception and the concrete and symbolic organ izations of all social life" (45), including a society's economic system. An examination of the effects of the gender process on women's economic status in any of British Columbia's forest-dependent com munities must be considered within the context of the process of economic restructuring that has gripped British Columbia's forest industry over the past two decades. Some investigations have used a gender-sensitive approach to examine the impacts of restructuring on the province's forest-dependent communities (see MacKenzie 1987; Grass and Hayter 1989; Stanton 1989; Hayter and Barnes 1992; Hay 1993).

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